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The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In 1855, New Zealand's women of childbearing age would go on to have approximately 5.3 children on average during their lifetime. Over the course of the next eighty years, the fertility rate would increase to 5.7 in 1870 (due to the continued arrival of settlers to the islands), before decreasing to 2.4 in 1935. During and after the Second World War, from 1935 until the 1970s, New Zealand experienced its 'Baby Boom', where the fertility rate increased to 4.1 births per woman in 1960, before dropping sharply to two births per woman in 1985, and it has remained between 1.9 and 2.2 since then.